


The Way Home

by girlskylark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fisherman Keith, Hermit Keith, Just two dudes chillin' in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, Kinda Selkies/Mermaids, Lance likes hugs, M/M, Mutual Pining, Probably in Norway, Quiet Keith, but who knows, casual writings, mermaid lance, rural fishing towns are where the gay mermaids are, selkie lance, soft romance, sorta?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-20 10:59:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10661181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlskylark/pseuds/girlskylark
Summary: “Where am I going to go?” Lance asked.“At my house—I mean, i-if you want. But I don’t—I don’t want to force you to stay with me, that’s your decision. What do you want to do?” he rambled fast, scratching the back of his neck. He frowned over at Lance, who still hadn’t gotten up, and was still staring at Keith the entire time.“My decision?” Lance repeated, and Keith nodded. “I want to stay with you, please.”- - -Since Keith's mom passed away, he's been on his own with her boat, and everything else she left behind. He doesn't mind the quiet—at least, he thought he didn't, until he finds a washed up stranger near his home, and takes him home.





	1. Always Help Stranded Boys In The Ocean

It was peaceful, just like every other day out on his boat. Sometimes Keith could hardly believe it was _his_ now—it always seemed to hold that title of his mom’s name—the one written on the side of the boat like some romantic notion of a husband memorializing his wife. But that was never the case. She named it Eloise in much the same way students write their names on the top of a worksheet. 

It’d been a few months, but… he was started to get used to having the boat to himself. If only just a little. 

But that definitely didn’t take away from the fact that he always felt this phantom exhaustion like… knowing it was all his made him a little less like a teenager. A little less dependent on other people. A little closer to being a hermit. _God_. He never meant to turn into a hermit and here he was, and he laughed at the idea of it. _Fucking ridiculous_. 

He may not have been a kid, but he certainly felt like it at times, like now as he spotted something floating in the distance, and his curiosity spiked.

He changed course and pulled up beside the object. He tossed a net aside and pushed towards the back of the boat as he glided past the object—it was almost… _white_ against the dark blue of the ocean, but getting closer, and observing it beside the white paint of the boat, he realized that wasn’t the case at all. _Is that…?_

“Christ,” he hissed, shoving open the door and leaning out to grab the person by the arm. Their skin was as cold as the water, and the fear of it turning clammy and _lifeless_ did wonders on his exhaustion. 

With his adrenaline high, Keith managed to heave the body up onto the slick surface of the boat floorboards. All long limbs and pure brown skin—kissed by the sun and tender in his slack expression, and closed, reddish eyelids. By some miracle Keith managed not to realize the guy was naked until after a cough jumped through the stranger’s chest, and spat water out between his bluish lips. Startled, Keith cringed and tried to push the guy onto his side before searching for the blanket he kept on hand. It got chilly some days, so it was nearby and took a second to fetch.

When he returned, the stranger was pushing up into a seated position, and tensed when Keith came close so quickly. He slowed, holding up the blanket. “I got you a—” he started, and his mind completely blanked when their eyes met.

The boy’s eyes were reddish at the moment, but nonetheless blue, and strikingly so. They were nearly steel in their vibrancy, and with his darkened skin, they looked all the more wider, brighter. Keith was sure his own eyes were the size of Mars at this point, and he couldn’t find the words to describe the blanket in his hand.

And then his steely eyes shifted to the blanket in Keith’s hands, and he lifted one of his slim arms up to grab it. He was freckled across his wrists and forearms, and his fingers were lanky, and boney at the knuckles. 

“Thanks… I guess,” the boy said, a small smile tugging on his lips, and showing his sharp, vampiric canines. Keith couldn’t help himself—he smiled back, probably redder than he could imagine. 

“Uh, y-yeah, no problem,” Keith replied, laughing at himself as he scratched the back of his neck and knelt down beside the boy. He propped his arms up on his knees, and studied the stranger who capsized on his boat. “You… got a name?”

The boy glanced down at his hands as he curled the blanket around his shoulders, and let Keith tug it close to his neck, and over his arms. He made a point to wrap the patterned fabric around the boy’s legs and stomach—no need to see that, or have it exposed to the February air. 

Lance’s fingers were reddish from the crisp chill in the air, and shaking. He curled his tongue over his teeth before smacking his lips and saying, “Lance. My name’s Lance.”

“Keith,” he replied, holding out a hand. The boy—Lance—looked at it, and then up into Keith’s eyes. He gestured to his hand, so Lance lifted his own up and let Keith shake it. “You’re freezing. You… out here on your own? Where’s your home?”

The question seemed to confuse Lance, which just made Keith’s momentary excitement and curiosity vanish. _Shit_ , he realized, _What have I gotten myself into?_

“Um… on my own,” Lance confessed, squinting at Keith before looking out at the water. “Cold.”

“Right, but do you have a place to go? Some place I could take you?” Keith asked, and the longer the silence stretched, the more he realized that he just found himself a house-mate. _Fucking spectacular_. “Did you hit your head? Mind if I check?” he asked, and Lance shrugged. _I’ll take that as a yes_.

Keith shuffled forward, kneeling now as he reached over to gently rest his hand beneath Lance’s chin, and turn his head to the side. The boy’s eyes were wild and wide, watching Keith out of the corner of his eyes with whatever he did. Keith’s heart stopped, started, and stopped like some terrible driver who didn’t know what they were doing. He figured that was pretty accurate, considering it wasn’t every day Keith found stragglers out in the ocean. 

Lance’s hair was coarse, and unrefined, and everything that came with swimming in the ocean too many times over the summer. Though, it wasn’t summer. It was fucking cold out—why would someone be swimming out this far anyhow? Sure, the cliffs were nearby, but nothing like—

“No bumps, no cuts. You seem okay—let me check your eyes real quick for a concussion.”

“Ok.”

Keith moved his hand away from Lance’s chin, but in an instant he felt cold fingers gripping hard onto his wrist, holding him still. He glanced back at Lance, who had that same wild look in his eyes. It was almost akin to panic, if Keith didn’t know any better. “I just gotta grab my flashlight,” Keith said, and slowly Lance retracted his fingers, looking as though he didn’t realize he moved them at all. 

There was no concussion—his pupils reacted fine, his speech was fine, if not blunt and choppy. Keith didn’t blame him for that. It was probably scary being picked up after being found unconscious in the ocean. He didn’t want to think about what would have happened had he not found Lance—the boy probably would have crashed straight into the rocky shore, and finding that one cloudy morning just didn’t seem like a happy way to start the day.

Keith cringed at the mental image of it as he steered them back to shore. Lance took a seat in the back, where the misty spray couldn’t touch him, and the wind wasn’t as harsh so low down. Keith glanced back at him enough times to know that the entire trip was spent with Lance’s eyes on his back; he was probably studying him for signs of a serial killer. 

When the motor died down, and they coasted towards the dock, he heard Lance’s voice speak up:

“Where am I going to go?” 

Keith stopped at that, still waiting to bank and grab the post on the side of the dock. He glanced at Lance quickly before darting forward and grabbing the post, heaving the boat to the side of it. “At my house—I mean, i-if you want. Unless—I mean, town’s pretty far from here. W-We could go in tomorrow, check with the police and shit. It’s a bit late now to do that, though. But I don’t—I don’t want to _force_ you to stay with me, that’s your decision. What do you want to do?” he rambled fast, quick in knotting the ropes to the posts and ending as he stood there, scratching the back of his neck and frowning over at Lance, who still hadn’t gotten up, and was still staring at Keith the entire time.

“My decision?” Lance repeated, and Keith nodded. “I want to stay with you, please.”

As if Keith couldn’t get any redder from embarrassment, _that_ seriously did him in. 

Keith’s frantic brain attempted to come to terms with the fact that he was letting a cute—albeit, _stranded_ guy—stay in his house. This would perhaps be his first guest _ever_ since his mom was around. Lance was started to get up, and Keith noticed from the corner of his eye. He turned just in time to watch Lance slip, the blanket fly up, and Keith slapped his hands over his eyes to avoid seeing Lance wipe out on the floorboards, naked and clumsy and all. 

“Shit!” Lance shrieked, and Keith peaked open an eye long enough to know that Lance _seriously_ needed help. 

He got onto the boat again and grabbed the fallen blanket. “Are you dizzy or something?” Keith asked. “Headache?”

“No—No, my… legs just aren’t…” Lance started, frustrated as he let Keith grab his arm and heave him up in one swift motion. Lance squeaked in the process, eyes wider than ever. His knees were shaking, feet skewed and uneven like some beached cat sopping wet on a dock. Keith wrapped the blanket over Lance’s shoulders and asked if he could walk. He couldn’t.

“All right. I’ll just carry you.”

“You’ll what?—Whoa!” Lance cried out, and dissolved into giggles as his arms went around the back of Keith’s neck to hold him still. His hands were in fists, cold and bitter against Keith’s skin. At least the blanket helped keep the rest of Lance warm, even if his toes were starting to turn blue. 

Keith walked Lance off the dock and up the trail to the house. He could always see his house from the ocean, mainly because there weren’t any trees to obstruct the view of it, or any rocks of that sort. It was all within a wide dip in the land, a shallow fjord, with rolling green and brown hills, and all topped in a layer of white clouds and fog in the mornings and evenings. As it started to get dark, they arrived at the door and found the inside of the house vacant and hollow, and growing dark. 

He was out of breath as he set Lance on one of the kitchen chairs. His chest ached from the hike, and his arms more so from carrying the guy. Sure, he was lanky and skinny, but even a pile of bones could get heavy after such a walk. It seriously made him reevaluate the severity of the situation. He couldn’t keep a fucking stranger in his house longer than necessary, especially one that _seriously_ needed medical attention.

“I’m just… gonna get you some clothes,” Keith said in a huff, and was already out the door before he could stick around to hear Lance say, “Okay. I’ll just be right here.”

Keith came back with one of his button ups, some underwear, and fuzzy sweatpants that he liked to wear in the winter to keep himself warm. Lance used him for support when it came to pulling on the underwear and pants, and needed help with that shirt since his fingers were shaking and staticky on the inside as warmth started to come back to them. 

“I have to go back down and take care of a few things. It’ll probably rain tonight so…” Keith started, nodding back towards the front door, the direction of the boat. Lance leaned over to look out the window at it, and then back at Keith.

“What should I do?”

“Why don’t… you lay down? You probably need some rest,” Keith said, rationalizing it in his head as he guided Lance down the hall. The only spare room was his mom’s, so he took Lance in there and ignored the sharp jolt in his chest as he pushed the door open and saw it all the way it usually was. Pristine. Simple.

Lance saw the poofy comforter, and the limitless amount of pillows, and gasped at the sight of it. He plunged onto the bed, face-first, and grabbed the corner of the blanket to bundle up into it. “ _Perfect_. So comfy,” he said, and his giddy, childlike smile caused something in Keith’s heart to snap. Maybe it was that spear that ruptured through his chest the second they walked into his mom’s old room.

“Right. I’ll be right back. You want the light on or off?” Keith asked, and flipped the switch to show the difference. 

Lance gasped when the room came to life under the yellowish lightbulb, and instantly shrieked, “ _On!_ Lights on!”

Keith laughed a little, smile tight. “Fine. I’ll be right back.”

  


  


When Keith came back, Lance was most definitely _not_ where he left him.

After putting his shit away in the mudroom and finally shedding off his damp coat and boots, he tore his hat off and tossed it onto the bench. He put his catch into the freezer in the basement. He moved through the house and started the fireplace up before heading over to his mom’s room—what a weird place to go these days. He always hesitated at the sight of it, always lingering and closed, but he found it partially opened, and the room… empty, aside from its usual things. 

Keith would have thought he was crazy, and that he just imagined everything, had the bed not been in a disarray. Evidence of Lance, no doubt. 

“Lance?” he called out, looking down the hallway and feeling his heart stop a little. He didn’t know why—it didn’t seem like this boy was any tougher than _him_. If Lance had plans on murdering him, he had plenty of chances to do it earlier.

He heard something clatter against the counter in the bathroom across the hall from his room. He hadn’t realized the door was open, and the light was on, and when he pushed it open the rest of the way, he found Lance perched on top of the closed toilet seat, dragging his finger tip against the bristles of a brush. Lance’s eyes jolted over to his in an instant, and a smile inched across his lips. “What’s this?” he asked, holding the brush out to him.

Keith stared at it, and then at Lance. He moved over and took it, and said, “It’s for your hair. It’s called a brush—here.” He stepped over to Lance and pulled it through the boy’s gnarled hair, the crisper strands, the untamed knots. It didn’t take long for Lance’s eyes to close as Keith damped his fingers in the sink and pushed them through the knots before combing them out with a finer brush. 

As Keith brushed Lance’s hair clean, he scowled down at it and thought hard about what all this meant. It couldn’t meant that he was just… helping out a guy who fell into the ocean and lost his memory. Logic said that, but everything else inside of him just… _knew_ something was wrong about that logic.

“You aren’t… from around here, are you?” Keith asked, frowning at the question. “I mean, you aren’t… _like_ me.”

“I don’t think so. No,” Lance answered, and tipped his head back to look up at Keith. They stared at one another for a moment, until Lance reached up one of his freckled hands and pushed the brush back down onto his hair, staring straight ahead again.

After another minute or so, Keith set the brush aside and decided that if he was going to eat, it probably made sense to offer something to Lance as well. They went to the kitchen where Lance sat on the table, legs dangling, and watching Keith as he prepared the meal. It was so dark in the kitchen that Keith had to flick on a light switch, regardless of the fire in the fire place illuminating the table on which Lance sat. “What are you making?” Lance asked.

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out,” he replied with a smirk as he scaled the fish and scraped the iridescent flakes into the trash. “I like to experiment.”

Lance laughed a little, smiling as he crossed his legs and pushed his shoulders up to his ears, hands on the table. Keith looked at him, and then pointedly turned back to the pan. He could feel his ears heating up. “So, um… what do—what do you normally like to eat?”

“Hm? Oh, I dunno. Fish, I guess,” he confessed with a shrug. “I love fish. But anything’s fine! Do you have anything bizarre around? I like trying new things.”

Keith’s chest swelled, and he would have burst out laughing had he not felt like that would… _offend_ Lance. Instead, he managed to disguise his smile by moving over to wash his hands clean and take a look in the refrigerator. “Well… I keep a lot of fruit around—”

“Really? Let me see!” Lance swung his feet high and hopped onto the ground. He hurried over, and that pretty much determined what Keith seasoned the fish with. The pineapples made the fish sweet, and the added cut-up strawberries sent Lance into a tizzy. He kicked his feet out in excitement, and managed to land a jab at Keith’s shin with it. Keith burst into laughter as Lance fussed over the fact that he just _kicked_ the host. 

That night after Keith cleaned and put the dishes away, he stopped by his mom’s old room and found Lance sitting crosslegged, looking through piles of his mom’s clothes. “Who’s are these?” Lance asked, holding up a wretched-looking t-shirt and tipping his head to the side of it. 

Keith crossed his arms and leant against the door frame, nodding to the pictures on the wall as he said, “My mom’s. She passed away not too long ago.”

“Passed away, huh?” Lance commented, voice a mumble as he folded up the shirt again and laid it down. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind,” Keith confessed. “Not anymore.” 

Lance kept his eyes on the clothes a while long before looking up at Keith and saying, “I don’t—I don’t have parents either. I’m just… kind of on my own, I guess.”

The confession would have just elicited a simple, “I’m sorry to hear that,” had Keith not realized the implication of it. It meant no one was looking for Lance. He was probably old enough to be without a guardian—the police couldn’t do anything, except maybe file a report. Investigate the reason Lance was in the ocean to begin with. Not exactly an ideal situation, considering Keith’s hunch. 

“Oh,” he said, and reached up to fiddle with a strand of hair tucked behind his ear. “Um… so where are you usually?”

“In the ocean,” Lance answered, so simply and without reserve, that Keith wondered why it was a secret at all. “I just… like coming here once in a while. Thanks for picking me up and letting me stay here.”

Keith swallowed hard, eyes wide as he nodded. Lance’s smile grew back twice as wide, and he instantly exclaimed, “Do you mind if I stick around tomorrow? I want to look around—I won’t bother you at all!”

“I don’t—I don’t mind you bothering me. I don’t mind,” Keith said fast. “I’m just—well, I’m taking my catch into town tomorrow morning. You could come with?”

Keith figured he never saw anyone more excited than Lance, and so he really shouldn’t have been all that surprised when later that night, he was woken up by movement outside his room.

He always kept the curtains in his room open above his bed, so the silver moonlight streamed in and spread over his plaid comforter, and the dark wood of his bedroom door. He saw two dark patches on the carpet where the door met the floor, so he pushed himself up onto his elbow with a groan. With one hand scrubbing his eye, he squinted at the time on his nightstand. It wasn’t even midnight. All his limbs felt heavy with sleep, even when the door to his room inched open.

Lance stuck his head inside, and upon seeing Keith away, he pushed the door open the rest of the way. “Sorry, I’m just so excited I couldn’t sleep,” he confessed, jittery and looking like something was _just barely_ holding him back from leaping straight into Keith’s room.

“It’s—fine. What is it?” Keith asked.

Lance fiddled with his freckled fingertips, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well… I dunno. I’m just—The room’s so empty. I’m not used to sleeping alone. I was wondering if I could sleep on your floor—But I understand if you don’t want me in here!” Lance added quickly, hugging his hands to his collarbone, and tugging on the fabric of his shirt. 

Keith looked down at his lap, and the size of his bed before reaching over and yanking the corner that was still tucked in on the opposite side of the bed. He gestured to it wordlessly, and thankfully Lance caught the hint. Keith wasn’t sure he could say it out loud without his voice cracking or something embarrassing like that. So Lance scurried right over and climbed onto the mattress. He tugged the blanket up to his chin, and them past his nose so only his eyes were peaking out at Keith as he settled back down and prepared to sleep again. But how could he sleep with Lance’s steely blue eyes were constantly watching him like that?

He squinted over at Lance, who was watching him with those same huge, curious eyes. Curious was exactly the word Keith was looking for, and with the silver moonlight, it made Lance all the more haunting with his careful stare. A shiver went down Keith’s spine, but he wasn’t entirely opposed to the sensation. 

  


  


Lance’s feet were cold against Keith’s, and somehow they managed to link together in the night, legs pushed against one another with little to no difficulty. The sunlight always woke Keith up, seeing as his bedroom window happened to face the ocean where the sun lifted up. The room was alight in a golden hue over tanned walls, and the red patterned quilt tucked high over Lance’s head. Keith blinked at the mound lying beside him, and noted that a pair of cold toes were pressed against the tops of his feet. 

Keith sat up, and the blanket pulled back to reveal Lance’s sleeping face. They weren’t particularly close, or anything of that sort, but somehow Keith still managed to feel his heart beating faster. It’d been weeks since anyone came into his house, let alone slept in it besides him. It gave him a warm feeling in his chest, no longer being alone—

 _No_ , he reprimanded himself as he trudged out of bed and moved to grab a spare change of clothes. _You can’t keep him around here. He’s just a visitor, just like anyone else_. Besides, the guy didn’t exactly _belong_ here, based on what they discussed. His house wasn’t exactly the ocean where Lance existed normally.

He changed quickly, knowing Lance was still asleep. He got as far as making breakfast and before Lance even stirred. When Lance exited the bathroom and came to the kitchen, Keith asked, “So how many times have you been on land then?”

“I dunno. I get a little… dazed whenever I do. Must be the shock of going in and out, ya know?” he answered, swaying to and fro as if to describe the motion of it. Escaping the ocean, returning to it. “But I think it’s about… four times now? Yeah, last time I was… farther north.” 

He went quiet as he took a seat on top of the table. Keith noted his solemn expression as he passed over a warm bowl of oatmeal coated in granola, honey, and bananas. Lance smiled down at it, and scooped in a mouthful with a pleasant hum. “I’s warm. What is it?”

“Oatmeal. Basic morning meal,” Keith laughed a little, and decided to take a seat atop the table as well. No need to make Lance move to sit like a normal human being. “I’m curious. What were you doing up north? You know the coast well?”

“Oh yeah, I do very much. I love the coast. We go north for feeding season—we all migrate there and it’s so much fun. We get to meet everyone else who lives elsewhere. New friends and stuff,” Lance explained between bites before swallowing it down and thinking hard for a moment. “Yeah… I was heading up there recently. Lost everyone along the way, so here I am.”

“Oh,” Keith murmured, spoon half-way to his mouth. He lowered it. “I’m… sorry about that. You think you’ll find them when they head back down?”

“I… don’t know. We’ll see. I might be able to catch up with them, but… it was tough. I’m not entirely sure where I am right now, if I’m completely honest,” he confessed with a hollow laugh. It wasn’t funny at all, and Keith could tell that. He set his bowl down and got up, going to one of the drawers and pulling out an atlas. “What are you doing?” Lance asked, voice a bit stuffy thinking about it. 

Keith didn’t blame him. Losing everyone was… _hard_ for some people. It was for him for some time, but he was getting over it. Mostly. 

He came back with a map of his coast. “Do you know how far north you go? The towns over there, on the map?” Keith asked, holding up the page and watching Lance’s eyes redden at the sight of it. He squinted at it, leaning closer and giving a helpless shrug.

“I… No. I don’t know the town names at all. I don’t know how to read maps, I’m sorry,” he confessed, lip quivering. Keith lowered the map, watching Lance break down as he erupted with, “I don’t know what happened! E-Everything was fine! A-And then these ships came by a-and they caught some of us in their huge nets and my ma just told me to _go_ and I don’t know how l-long I swam for but I lost _everybody._ ”

Lance set the bowl down, arms down at his sides, exposing their freckles to Keith, wanting more from him than just _staring_. So Keith stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Lance’s shoulders, letting the atlas drop onto the table as Lance clutched onto him and sobbed about his family and friends and whether or not they were okay. 

  


Lance couldn’t seem to calm down, so Keith took him outside. Maybe seeing the ocean would make him feel better—at least, that was Keith’s logic. He didn’t know a whole lot about what made people feel better after they lost their family to a boat of fishermen. They took one of the heavy wool blankets, which he wrapped around Lance’s shoulders, and carried their oatmeal out into the semi-cold of February. 

It was tolerable in the mornings, when the mist was leaving the bluffs behind. They climbed up to the height of it, aware of the golden sunlight seeping between the rocks and the hills past them. When they peaked at the top of it all, Lance’s face shone bright again, and he smiled out at the obscured horizon line. They were one with the ocean and sky, and Lance through his arms up, letting the blanket pool around his feet as he shouted, “This is in _credible—!_ ”

His voice was drowned out by the sound of the waves crashing into shore, the echo lost forever. Keith smiled at him, popping the cap off of one of the bowls and passing it to Lance. “Eat up before it gets cold.”

They huddled together under the blanket as they ate, and after a while, past the point where the red in Lance’s eyes vanished, Lance spoke up again. “I’m sorry for freaking out back there. It’s probably harder for you, _knowing_ that your mother isn’t coming back.”

“It’s probably worse _not_ knowing,” Keith confessed. “You deserve closure. So… don’t apologize for freaking out. It’s fine.”

He could feel Lance’s eyes on him, but he kept eating his oatmeal, scraping off the bottom of the bowl to finish it off. Just as he was putting the cap back on his bowl, he felt Lance shift closer, and an instant later, he felt lips press to his cheek—just for a split second. “Thank you,” Lance said, and leant back and returned to his breakfast. He ate fast, probably _knowing_ that Keith’s entire face was red.

Keith’s boat was docked down below, in the crescent of the bay where his home was. He chose to stare at that, hoping to quell the beating of his heart by matching it in time with the constant, even sway of the tides. His hair whipped around his face when a breeze came through, so he reached into the pocket of his jacket and unraveled the hat he stuff in there. He tugged it on with a sigh and looked to Lance. His visitor finished his meal. 

“You ready to head back?” Keith asked, and Lance shook his head.

“I just wanna sit here for a bit longer. Next big gust of wind, how ‘bout?” he suggested, and Keith agreed to it. 

So they sat there until another big breeze came by a little while later. When they stood up, Keith folded the blanket up to enveloped Lance’s shoulders twice, and then took the bowl from Lance. “So we’re going to town?” he asked, and Keith confirmed it. He could practically feel the excitement rippling off Lance like static.

“We’ll be taking my boat, if that’s all right,” Keith said as they started back down the hill. Lance bounded up beside him, smiley as ever, and bumped into Keith’s side. They walked close, and Keith could barely feel the chill on the wind with Lance standing right beside him, warming every part of him up from the inside out. 

Lance helped carry Keith’s catch to the boat where it smelled like dead fish, and seaweed. Lance didn’t seem to mind the scent at all, and took a seat beside the cooler of fishing said, “So what are you doing with all of these?”

“Selling them,” he answered, starting up the motor. Lance’s eyes perked up, head turning to look at the origin of the noise. Keith snickered a little, and started them out onto the waves. “It’s a bit bumpy going out!” he shouted over the roar, ordering that Lance hang on tight and not let go. 

When they were out, dipping between the curves of the rocks, and heading down the coast, Lance moved up to the front of the boat and sat there, squinting into the wind, and the mist spraying up on their faces. Keith laughed, especially when Lance looked back, hair wet and eyes wild. Lance scrambled back to him, tripping over the blanket, and tugging it close as he sat in Keith’s chair. That left Keith to stand at the wheel and look back at where Lance was sitting, content and relaxed, and hair wet. 

They docked in the harbor where the docks were higher up than the lip of Keith’s boat. He used the ledge to boost himself up onto the dock before leaning down so Lance could pass the cooler up to him. Lance rolled onto the dock and sat there while Keith tied up the boat. The waves were harsh against the concrete edge of the harbor, and the brick lining that was slick with moisture. In the cool temperatures, they weren’t surprised to find some of it slippery and icy. 

When they got to the marketplace, under the shelter of a wide open warehouse, it was hopeless trying to get Lance to stay still. Keith grabbed onto his sleeve once, just to say, “ _Don’t_ take anything from the stands. Got it?” The last thing he needed was for Lance to go haywire and start taking everything he could get his hands on, or start taste-testing things that weren’t meant for trying out.

So Lance disappeared while Keith hauled the cooler to the back of the building where the permanent coolers were. He met with the storeowner who wrote out a check and passed it over to Keith. “I’ll bring more tomorrow,” he promised the guy before heading out, folding the check into his inside jacket pocket. 

The bank was close, and Lance wasn’t around at first glance, so Keith wandered over there and put the check away before heading back to the marketplace. The streets were relatively empty and grey—most everything was dull here, but Keith didn’t mind. It reminded him of the morning fog—white and grey storefronts, green shutters, red brick, tan walls and flower pots on the stoops. 

His leather boots were starting to show damp spots as he walked through the puddles before hopping onto the sidewalk, hands in his pockets. The warehouse doors were full and open now, and there were people wandering in and out of the shade. It smelled like fresh herbs, and later, seafood in the farther back of the warehouse. Sunlight streamed in from the patchwork of windows overhead, and the skylights highlighting stands along the way. Patterned tent covers, colored banners, wooden signs. 

Keith stopped to talk to a lady his mom had been close with. She was elderly and was an avid sewer and knitter—many of the blankets in his house were made by her. The one Lance liked to wear happened to be one woven by her. “Have you seen a guy around? He’s wearing the wool blanket you made my mom a while back.”

“Oh, the plaid one? Yes, I saw him around. He went over to the seafood.”

Keith thanked her and wandered down the isles to where the fish were, and the snails and crabs, eels and crayfish. He asked one of the owners he did work for, and got a message saying Lance went to the antiques. Lance went out the back. He’s by barns. He’s out by the docks. By the time he got that far, his heart was about to explode. Why was he worrying so much? It wasn’t like Lance was any of _his_ concern—Lance didn’t even belong here; he was just a visitor. He didn’t need Keith to coddle him and fret like this.

But from what Keith could pick up, Lance never went to the thick of a town before. He never saw all these people, these _things_ , the food the smells the atmosphere. He wondered if it was a terrible idea to let Lance wander on his own—it definitely was. And here he was following the faint breadcrumb trail Lance left behind on his way to the docks. 

Keith held the cooler dangling at his side as he slowed on the dock steps, shoulders sagging in relief at the sight of his boat occupied. It was farther down the dock, and so it took a small while for Keith to trudge over there, but he could see the plaid quilt, and Lance’s mess of coarse brown hair peaking up from it. At the sound of footsteps approaching, Lance bolted up, and Keith hesitated at the sight of tears streaming down Lance’s face. 

“I-I thought—” Lance started, gasping as Keith stopped at the bow of the boat, cooler tipping onto the wood planks. Lance took in a deep breath, and bundled his hands into the blanket, ducking his head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be crying.”

“Yeah, well, I thought I lost you back there so we’re even,” Keith sighed out, and crouched down to lower the cooler into the boat. 

In an instant, Lance was clinging to him—arms around his neck and all. He nearly took Keith straight into the boat, and for a second he felt like he was about to be drowned. The boat shifted underneath Lance, and if Keith wasn’t so naturally tuned to the harbor and the ocean, he would have panicked over nearly falling in. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t know where you went,” Lance explained, voice muffled against Keith’s winter coat.

Keith’s eyes went wide as he wrapped his arms around Lance, still knelt against the dock. The memory of Lance telling him about his family was still fresh in his mind, and realizing that it was still raw in Lance’s as well meant he shouldn’t have expected Lance to be completely okay with him wandering off to do work. He hadn’t even _told_ Lance, for Christ’s sake. 

“I should have checked in with you before going out of the marketplace,” Keith confessed, unlatching himself so he could get back into the boat. “I just had to take care of a few things.”

“I overreacted—”

“No, it’s fine. If you don’t know where I am, my boat is the best place to check. As long as that’s around, I’m around,” Keith promised, as he walked up to the bow and untied the rope from the post. “We’re gonna be out on the ocean for the rest of the morning. You okay with that?”

Lance nodded, and got settled in on one of the cushioned benches, wrapped up and looking cozy as he watched Keith get the boat set for departure. They backed out of the docks, and Keith spun the wheel around to direct them out of the channel between the docked fishing boats. Lance waved to nearby onlookers, and a family standing at the base of the lighthouse, atop the concrete walkway and the massive boulders alongside it. Keith merely smiled, especially when Lance turned to him laughing.

“So what is that?” he asked a while later, pointing to where the family was standing.

“The lighthouse? It’s for when it gets foggy, or it’s dark out, and boats need to get back to shore. So they know where the harbor is,” he answered, shouting over the roar of the engine, and the intensity of the waves they crashed into. They weren’t quite white-tipped, but enough to spark a mist of water over them. On the tip of the bow, Lance sat as close as possible to the seat’s edge, the wind in his face and his blanket just barely hanging on by the hand he kept clinging to it. Every now and then he looked back at Keith, as if to make sure he was still awake. He was.

  


  


“So where were you when the fishermen came?” Keith asked, and Lance shrugged. “What about the shape of the coast? Was it by a fjord, or bluffs? A beach?”

“I don’t know. I mean, we’re always sort of at the surface, but… we must have been around the Big Rock. We had just passed it, before the boat showed up,” he explained, lip pinched between his fingers as he studied the atlas. “I just—I don’t know what this means? Are they drawings of the coast?” 

“They’re bird’s eye view,” Keith explained. “It’s like… You go way-way up and take a picture facing down. And that’s what the coast outline looks like. Does that make sense?” Lance shrugged, brow furrowed as he tried to process it. Keith sat back for a moment to think. For someone who was never introduced to pictures, semiotics, or anything currently related to modern imagery… “Hang on, I have an idea. You said there was a big rock.”

“Mmhm. The _Big_ Rock, like… _Thee_ Big Rock. It’s huge, and it’s kind of off the coast a bit, like it’s own little island. Lotta birds collect there in the summer,” he said, gesturing heavily with his hands as Keith went to fetch photo albums from the hutch in the kitchen. He bent down and gathered up every slot of pictures he could find—every book, scrapbook, folder there. 

“Okay, there’s a few of those I’m thinking of. I might have some pictures of it—my mom liked to take photos,” Keith explained. “But there’s a _ton_ on the opposite coast—like… the other side of the horizon, I guess? I dunno. We’re in a strait right now, so that’s two land masses facing one another nearby. Maybe you swam across the strait? And that’s why you don’t recognize anything?” Keith suggested.

“Yeah, everything seems backwards. What you say is south is north to me,” Lance confessed, and moaned aloud, slapping his hands onto his face. “I didn’t mean to swim that far! They’ll _never_ find me.”

“Hey, it’s fine—we’ll just… take a trip over there one of these days and ask around the harbors by the… Big Rock you’re talking about,” Keith suggested, and after a moment of hesitation, asked, “Wait—so what would we be asking around for, anyway? I just… assumed…”

He didn’t know how to find the word, because he felt ridiculous even thinking about it. Lance raised his eyebrows at Keith, encouraging him to continue. Eventually, he slapped his hands down and blurted out, “I just thought you were a mermaid or something.”

Lance snorted and laughed out loud. “N-No! No, I’m not a mermaid! We don’t really have a word for it. We’re just sort of… like manatees, and seals. And every now and then we move up north to feed and then travel back down. But for the most part we just like… sunbathing, and nice flat rocks.”

“Sunbathing, huh? That explains a lot.” As Keith said it, Lance squinted over at him from where he was soaking up the one sunny spot in the kitchen that day. It wouldn’t last all that long, considering the clouds on the horizon, but for the moment it was warm in that one sun spot. “So… you’re like a selkie? Do you have a… pelt or something? That lets you go in and out of the water like that?”

“A what?” Lance choked out, before getting distracted by the pictures Keith was laying out. He pointed to a small island and said, “It looks like that, but not quite.”

“That’s down my coast from here. I’m trying to find the ones my mom took from the other side of the strait,” he confessed. “So are you?”

“A selkie? No, I don’t think so. No pelt, as far as I know.”

“Then how do you go to and fro like that?”

“I don’t. It’s kind of complicated, and I don’t remember it half the time. It’s kind of disorienting—hence you finding me floating in the ocean like that,” he explained, busy sifting through the photos. He lifted up a few and narrowed his eyes at them before setting them down. “You said these are pictures? Like the ones in your mom’s room and stuff? And on the walls?”

“Yeah, she had a nice camera back in the day, but it broke and she never got a new one. So a lot of the newer pictures were taken on our old polaroid,” he explained, and went to fetch it from the kitchen. He hadn’t used it in ages. 

“So could it be like a mirror?” Lance asked, reaching for it, but Keith held it back.

“It’s really expensive—I can’t let you use it. But I _could_ take a picture of you, if you wanted,” he suggested, and Lance yelped at the idea, perking up and jumping for the camera. Keith held it up out of his reach and forced Lance back down. “Hang on! You gotta sit still for it, or else it won’t turn out.”

“Oh, okay. Sitting still, got it.” 

Lance straightened up and stared directly at the camera. Though, he must not have understood the concept of it, so maybe that was why he didn’t smile, and then proceeded to scream when the flash went off. The camera whirred as it processed the image, and cranked it out of the bottom slot. Keith lowered it down and pulled the picture free, holding it up.

They joined together to watch the polaroid process, and start to show the negative image of Lance sitting in the chair. “ _Oh_ , I get it now. That makes sense, sort of,” Lance murmured as he appeared on the squarish page. He plucked it from Keith’s hands, gingerly holding it at the corners. “That’s me?”

“Yeah, doesn’t it look like you?”

“Not at all,” he confessed, blinking up at Keith before staring down at it again. “This is so bizarre. Is that really me?”

Keith snorted and said, “Yes, that’s you. You see yourself in the mirror every time you go into the bathroom.” Lance shrugged, still staring at the photo. 

“I’m…” he started, but never finished it because he handed it back to Keith. “You can keep it. I don’t want it.”

“ _What_? Are you serious?” Keith laughed, smirking as Lance plopped back down onto the table stubbornly. Keith was still smiling as he went to the fridge and clipped Lance’s picture up on it. “Whatever, I’ll just keep it here for now.” The picture was fine, in his opinion. But maybe that was because he already thought Lance was beautiful—so maybe he was a little bias.

  


  


That evening, it rained harder than the previous night. He was showering when it started, and the first crash of thunder rattled the mirror on the wall. He paused in the midst of lathering soap onto his hands, swearing he heard something knock on the door, but ignored it and continued to scrub his fingers through his hair. It used to freak him out—living alone—but after spending so much time in this old house alone, it didn’t phase him much. Sure, the floors creaked and the walls ached every now and then, and the wind seemed to whistle through some parts but he never minded it anymore.

But clearly, that wasn’t the same for other people.

When he got out of the bathroom, he stumbled straight into Lance, who was sitting in the carpeted hallway nibbling on his fingernails. Keith staggered into the wall, hand bracing on it as he regained balance. Lance bolted up, and clung to Keith like the end of the world was upon them. He had the plaid blanket tucked up over his hair and ears, and the wool tickled Keith’s cheek.

“I hate storms,” Lance confessed, hugging Keith close and drawing from the after-warmth of the shower. 

“Okay. I’m just gonna grab a book and then we can hide under the blankets or something,” he suggested, and Lance nodded, letting him lead the way to the living room where the fireplace was dying, and the books were stacked on the shelves beside it. Keith grabbed his recent read—the one he kept horizontal from all the others—and let Lance hold on tight to his free hand as they wandered back down the hallway together.

In the room, the lights didn’t turn on, so they abandoned that effort in favor of striking a match and lighting the candles on the nightstands. Keith tugged the curtains closed over his headboard before settling down under the blankets. Lance still had his blanket wrapped securely around his shoulders and head, and huddled into Keith shoulder as he flicked through the pages of the book to where his last dog-eared page was.

Lance fell asleep before Keith, and when exhaustion started to fade in, Keith finally got up to blow out the candles. He settled back in, and was surprised to find Lance awake again, yawning. A flash of light streaked over the ceiling through the crack in the curtains, and a second later thunder rumbled through the room. Lance’s eyes went wide, and when Keith finally got back into the bed, he was surprised when Lance clung to him, wrapping his arms around Keith’s torso. 

They didn’t say anything. Keith didn’t talk much to begin with, until Lance showed up. There wasn’t really a reason _to_ talk, when there wasn’t anyone to talk to. But even when the two of them were just silent like this, awake and aware of it, it just seemed so naturally. Eventually Keith nestled his head atop Lance’s, and closed his aching eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Easter ramblings :O I wrote this over the weekend because I was inspired, and have been wanting to write a semi-mermaid!Lance fic for a while now. Either that, or a shark-mermaid Keith because OOOEEE that boy would look good with a shark tail lol.
> 
> I have no self control. I'm still writing [Find The Others](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10375635/chapters/22917735). I have a chapter planned for tomorrow on that!
> 
> You can fight me over on Tumblr under [girlskylark](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/) :D


	2. Thunder Storms Are Cool Clap If You Agree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Tis rainy and full of soft, precious fluff.

When Keith woke up, the thunder stopped, but it was still pouring. It seemed to dump in rivulets off the rooftop, and splashing into a makeshift moat around the house. It helped that they were on the hill, and most of the currents of water trickled down, back into the ocean where they probably originated. Keith could hear the constant hum of water cascading as he laid there, staring at the gloomy, bluish ceiling with Lance curled up into his side like a cat. It took a moment for Keith to realize that storms meant that the morning light was off—

—It was almost nine in the morning.

“Shit,” he hissed, pushing himself up and inadvertently waking Lance in the process.

“What—?” he mumbled, pushing his hands to his eyes with a yawn. 

Keith scrambled out of bed and grabbed a change of clothes, ditching his pants and shirt in the hamper. “I have to go. _Shit_ —I don’t usually set an alarm, I should’ve but—”

“What is it?” Lance asked, squinting as Keith threw on a hat and his raincoat. 

“Usually my best catches are when it’s dawn and raining—I missed that chance, which means I have to go out now for who knows how long,” he explained. “You can stay here. You don’t have to go out in the rain with me.”

“Are you sure?” 

Keith looked up at Lance, sitting on the bed with that plaid blanket still wrapped around his arms and shoulders. His hair was an absolute mess, and with the added curls he just looked rather humorous. Keith smiled a little, and pointedly yanked the covers up over Lance. “Yes, I’m sure. Get some sleep. I’ll be back for a late lunch, but help yourself to anything that’s in the kitchen.”

“Okay.”

Keith hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind him before heading to the living room. He started up the fireplace so it’d be nice and warm when he got back. The last thing he did was grab an apple before leaving Lance to sleep until noon for all Keith cared. He wondered if Lance would actually do that, since Keith was never capable of sleeping so long. It was a miracle that he slept to nine to begin with.

He set out onto the flat waters sprinkled with the constant downpour, and hoped to God that he wouldn’t have to spend the entire day out to catch his quota. And it wasn’t that Keith despised the rain or anything—he never really minded it. He liked studying the water droplets as they dripped from the hood of his rain jacket, and how they pooled in crevices of the waterproof fabric. He liked sitting or standing for long periods of time, and then moving just to see where the water collected and splashed onto the boat deck. 

The rain started to fade a while later, and dissolved into a drizzle. The sky was grey and blue, and caused everything to show up dull and muted. It wouldn’t be letting up any time soon, as Keith noted from the darker clouds rolling on the horizon. Every now and then he could see the lightning flashing in the far distance. He’d have to leave soon.

He checked his cooler around a quarter to noon, and figured it was enough for today. He’d have to bring them into town tomorrow, considering all the lightning on the horizon. He started up the boat again and hauled it towards the shore where he collected his catch and carried it up to the house. He dragged the cooler down into the basement, from the door on the outside step. There was a river starting to form on the walkway, and his goulashes just splashed right through.

A while ago, his mom installed a huge walk-in cooler—the sort he expected to find in restaurants and the like, to keep their food fresh. He laid the fish into the bins and washed out his cooler before heading out and kicking off his boots and hanging up his rain coat. It dripped onto the concrete of the basement as he wrung out his sweater and kicked out his legs. His jeans were sticking to his ankles, and curling around his feet, so he rolled them up and decided to change them as soon as he could. 

While he loved the rain, he hated wet denim. 

When he walked up the steps to the mudroom, he nearly forgot that he wasn’t alone, and as he realized it, he called out, “Hey, I’m back!”

In an instant there was the clamor of something scurrying across the entire house, and Keith barely got through the mudroom door before Lance latched onto him, legs swinging up and linking around Keith’s hips. “ _Yay!_ You’re back!”

Keith was so startled that it felt like everything just… _stopped_ for the split second Lance was in the air before he slammed into Keith. He staggered back, arm going around Lance and after a moment he realized that Lance had no intention of letting go. He felt like he was carrying an oversized toddler, and the thought made him burst out laughing. He laughed so hard his stomach hurt, as if his arms weren’t already sore from carrying the cooler up from the boat. Lance was so lax about it, and he just hooked his chin over Keith’s shoulder, and stayed there, giggling while Keith carried the both of them to the kitchen.

“What’d you do while I was gone?” he asked, and stuttered to a halt when they came to the open kitchen, with the view of a… complete disaster. “What the hell’d you _do?_ ”

Sure, the integrity of the kitchen was fine, but all of the cabinets were open and there were shards of a broken glass on the counter. The refrigerator was wide open—talk about a waste of energy—and there was a splotch of spilled juice underneath a mound of towels. Keith’s grip on Lance slackened, and Lance slid down and staggered to his feet.

“It got out of hand.”

“ _Apparently_ ,” Keith huffed. “First off: We don’t use ten towels to fix one spill.”

He shut the refrigerator doors and bent down to scoop up and sift through the towels to pick out the clean ones before tossing them underneath the sink again. While he worked on that, he told Lance to just toss the pieces of the broken plate into the trash. Keith pushed up his sleeves before scrubbing the floors and wringing out the red from the towel before tossing out the now-empty juice carton. Lance stood by the counter, the garbage can in front of him, with all the plate pieces where they belonged. He picked absently at his fingers as he watched Keith wipe down the floor once more—no need to attract bugs of any kind this time of year. 

“Sorry about the mess,” Lance murmured.

“It’s fine. Have you eaten anything yet?” he asked, and Lance shrugged, still scratching at his hand. “Well, is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’? You gotta give me more than that.”

With a sigh, Lance confessed, “No, I haven’t. I just got up.”

“Okay, then we can eat together. Did you like the oatmeal yesterday? We could make some of that—I could teach you,” he suggested, and instantly Lance perked up again, pout gone. 

After shutting all the cabinet doors, Keith bent down and grabbed a pot from below. “We gotta use one of these, ‘cause they’re meant for the stove. Fill it up half-way with water,” he instructed, passing it to Lance. While he went to the sink and filled it up, Keith reached over to the corner of the counter and dragged out the case of oats. He glanced over at Lance, standing in the light of the window, and wondered how it was possible for someone his size to be so… _skinny_. Even Keith’s mom’s clothes seemed to dwarf Lance’s frame, and accentuate his boney elbows and the slim size of his freckled wrists.

_At least he doesn’t look pale anymore_ , Keith mused to himself as Lance returned, eyes on the pot, and then the stove he set it on. 

“Um… what next?” Lance asked, and instantly Keith realized he was zoning out. He didn’t want to blame it on the fact that Lance’s collarbone was showing, but that _did_ happen to be the place Keith focused on before blinking back into reality. 

Keith shook his head and cleared his throat. “Right—okay. Now we turn the stove on. It’s a gas stove, so you have to push down on the dial and turn it all the way around—Yes, like that.”

Keith took two scoops of oats and dumped them into the water as it started to boil. He took a spoon and handed it to Lance so he could stir it properly. He went to the box of tissues by the window sill and blew his nose—the rain seriously screwed with his immune system, but it would pass. A lot of the times cold weather just did that to Keith—he was always quick to recover, and having something warm to eat would help with that.

By the time they were done, Lance stared at the bowls of oatmeal as Keith doused them with honey and said, “Wow, that was easier than I thought.” Keith laughed and bumped hips with Lance before taking out a loaf of bread and cutting them both a slice. He handed one to Lance before biting down on his own. They ate at the kitchen table again, where they watched the storm rolling in, and heard the thunder start to rattle the windows. 

Lance seemed more collected this time around, even when the clouds pitched the day into darkness, and made it seem almost like night. They left the lights off, which meant the fireplace was the only thing illuminating their meal, and the peculiar look on Lance’s face as he stared out the window. Streaks of shadows trickled over his cheeks and hair as the rain dribbled down the glass. 

Keith studied him from across the table, remembering how just yesterday he had his shin kicked due to Lance’s excessive excitement over oatmeal. Not many people got excited about _oatmeal_ , and the thought made him laugh. It was amusing, and he realized that any day he’d spend without Lance, he’d think about oatmeal differently, or just… _things_ he never really looked at properly. Like brushes, or electricity. Some people just weren’t familiar with those simple things Keith was used to. 

“It seems so far away,” Lance murmured, tucking his hand under his chin as he shoveled in a mouthful of oatmeal and looked at Keith. They stared at one another as Lance swallowed and said, “I feel like I’ve been gone for ages.”

“You think your family’s already at the feeding grounds?” Keith asked, and Lance shrugged.

“I dunno. Something doesn’t seem right about any of it. I guess I was pretty in shock when it happened. I was just… _functioning_ , you know?” he said.

“I like to call it ‘working on autopilot’,” he commented. Lance tipped his head to the side, raising an eyebrow at Keith. “It basically means… you’re working like a machine. You aren’t thinking about anything, you’re just… functioning, I guess. Sometimes that happens when it’s life or death.”

“I guess… and time feels like it works differently when I’m in the ocean. So maybe that’s it too,” he mused aloud, nibbling on the bread. “This tastes good. What’d you call it?”

“French bread.”

“ _Yum_. Can I have another piece?”

They spent the day indoors because the weather was so fucking awful, and since Keith already covered his boat up for the night, he didn’t have to worry about it later on. Still, every awful storm like this did wonders to his anxiety. He thought constantly about the state of his boat—his mom would be _so_ pissed if she found out he wrecked it just by leaving it out at the dock during a storm. Sure, he raised it out of the water on the lift, but _still_ …

The best he could do to take his mind off of it was read, and with Lance lazing around on the couch with him, he ended up reading it aloud. Thankfully, something that was universal in all cultures happened to be the art of storytelling, so Lance picked up on it quickly, and the only things that needed explaining were more modern expressions and technologies Lance wasn’t familiar with. 

Lance loved the bread so much that they went through half the loaf just to satisfy his hunger for it. Keith figured there wasn’t any harm in stuffing Lance with carbs—the guy was skinny enough as it was. Fish probably wasn’t exactly the greatest singular diet for a full-grown individual. 

Keith grew tired not long after. With the rough start to the morning, and a full stomach, he wasn’t surprised that he grew sleepy around this time. Naps were more or less common these days, and Lance didn’t seem to mind that he fell asleep against his shoulder where they were leaning together. 

  


  


_Is that…_?

It wasn’t every day he found bodies out this far in the ocean. The thought of finding a _dead_ body was almost as terrifying as finding one alive. Before Keith could even reach in to grab the stranger out of the water, they were swimming up, bright eyes wide and open, and steely blue as ever. Familiar. They could have resembled the cloudy distance of a corpse’s eyes with their pale complexion—but his dark skin gave him away. 

His hands came to the deck of the ship, pushing up and leaning up to meet Keith as he fell back, farther away and at eye-level with the stranger. Something about the sway of the boat made him feel so much smaller than the man smirking down at him now.

“I’ve been wondering when you’d come this way,” Lance spoke, voice purring like a seductive drawl. He lowered down onto his elbows, and a shimmer of scales flicked behind his head in the water. That was— _one massive mermaid tail_. It was black and sharp around the edges, and the scales were iridescent—almost navy in the light.

“I-I don’t—I don’t understand—” Keith stammered, and for some reason all of his movements seemed so slow in comparison to Lance’s. 

Lance grabbed him by the ankle, sharp, freckled fingers wrenching him closer. Keith skidded across the floor, nearly tipping over the open door had he not braced his foot on the wall beside it. They were nose-to-nose now, and all he could focus on were Lance’s vampiric teeth. 

“Aw, so cute. You know—I’ve been watching you for _weeks_ now,” Lance breathed into his ear, his words hot and burning through Keith’s veins. Somehow, he still managed to shudder. “Day in—day out. You live a boring little life, don’t you? I have your routine down—I know _everything_ about you, more than anyone else you know. Wouldn’t you want to come with me? I’m all you’ll ever need. I can take care of you; you won’t have to be alone anymore. No one would even know where you went. No one would come to see if you were still there…”

Lance’s hands were on him, drawing cold lines down Keith’s arms, taking him by the hands. Everything screamed _No_. Everything inside him resisted, but nothing came out except a weak shake of his head. It hurt more than anything to know that Lance was right—Keith could die out here, and the only people who would wonder what happened to him would be the shop owners he supplied to. He would die, and no one would come to check.

So Lance pulled him into the water, black tail swirling and slimy against Keith’s legs as he plummeted into the water. Everything felt unreal and so suffocating that when he finally submerged, he woke up panting hard. 

“Whoa—Are you okay? Your face is all red,” Lance said. 

Keith blinked hard and looked around the living room. He was just at home. He looked over at Lance, who was leaning up against the arm rest, paging through Keith’s book. They stared at each other while Keith tried to steady his heart from beating so hard. It felt like someone had it locked in a wooden case and was rattling it around, and it hurt so terribly. 

“Y-Yeah, I’m fine. Just… bad dream,” he confessed, clearing his throat as he shifted and sat up straighter. He stared across the room, over at the fireplace, before pushing himself up hastily and moving away from Lance.

He hadn’t thought about that. He hadn’t thought about it at all.

It never registered that whatever Lance was could potentially endanger Keith. He never thought Lance was anything other than some innocent, washed up creature that stumbled across his boat in need of help. As he poured himself a glass of water, he wondered if all of this was just a ruse. Sure, Lance had plenty of chances to kill Keith. They slept in the same bed together—Keith was just _asleep_ _next to him_. But what if it was more complicated than that? 

He never thought Lance could be a _siren_ or something like that.

“You don’t look good.” Lance voice startled Keith out of his reveries. He spun around, hand clinging to the edge of the sink. Lance was in the open archway of the kitchen, frowning at Keith with his arms crossed. “You said you had a bad dream. What was it?”

The storm was far enough away that the lightning came soundlessly, but it struck Keith all the same. He turned away from Lance, and drowned the silence in his glass of water. Did he just invite a murderous mythological creature into his house? _Oh God, you can’t just_ ask _a person that_ , he thought dreadfully. 

“I don’t want to talk about it—it had to do with my mom,” he lied, swallowing hard. “I’m fine.”

“If you say so. You gonna read some more? I like listening to your stories,” Lance said, swinging back around and waltzing back into the living room. Keith stared after him, eyes wide, and wondered briefly if he was going insane.

After a moment spent controlling the shit-storm rising in his head, Keith went around the wall separating the kitchen from the open-format of the living room drifting in to where the fireplace was, illuminating the far corner in the house. Lance was back on the couch, tossing the plaid blanket around his shoulders and cuddling into the cushions. Keith watched him for a moment before making his decision. 

“Hey Lance,” he said, drawing those steely blue eyes back onto him. “You want to… check out the opposite coast tomorrow? We can go first thing in the morning, get as far as we can. I mean, we’ll have to fill up on fuel in town before heading over, but…”

“Wait, really?” Lance erupted, eyes bright as he sat up straighter. “Could we? You wouldn’t mind?”

Keith shrugged and offered a smile, hoping it didn’t show up strained. Lance yelped excitedly, bursting up to run at Keith, throwing his arms around his shoulders and swinging them around. “Thank you! Thank you, thank you, _thank you!_ ” Keith tried his hardest not to feel like he was suffocating.

  


  


That night, Keith tried to convince Lance to stay in his mom’s room, but somewhere in the middle of the night, Lance ended up sneaking in anyway. Keith was out cold at the time and didn’t realize it until the morning when the sunlight streamed in and alerted his eyes to open up. It didn’t take long to realize that there was someone wrapped around him from behind, cold feet curled against his own. 

His instinct was to fling himself off the bed and claim he had to pee like the dickens, but that just seemed rude and, quite honestly, a hasty thing to do. He wasn’t _certain_ Lance was a siren, or any other seafaring mythological creature out to kill fishermen. Honestly, that would have been something to ask the day they met—definitely _not_ two days later. Nothing about Lance seemed all that… _malicious_ to him anyway.

He spent far too much time the previous night debating the chances of it. Going to find Lance’s family, or at least the Big Rock where they were attacked, was the first step in ensuring Lance’s story was true. What sort of creatures _were_ they, though, that a bunch of fishermen would intentionally go out of their way to capture them? If a band of sirens were causing ships to fail, then it would be justifiable—

_No, stop thinking like that_ , Keith hissed to himself, tucking his hands closer, underneath his chin as he tried to calm down. He could feel Lance’s cheek pressed to the back of his shoulder, and his soft breath indicating that he was still asleep. Those sharp, vampiric teeth were _much_ too close to his jugular. 

He nudged his elbow back to wake Lance up. “Hey, c’mon. We gotta get going,” Keith said, but found his voice half-gone. Lance rolled away from him, taking the warmth of his cover with him. Keith frowned as he sat up, feeling his head swim in the process. His eyes flickered black around the edges before fading—dehydrated. It didn’t help at all in the overall stuffy feeling clogging the forefront of his forehead. The pressure was _unbelievable_ when he stood up.

_Shit_ , he thought, pushing his hands over his eyes as he tried to breathe in through his clogged nose, but couldn’t. 

“Sorry about sneaking in last night. I tried to wake you up, but you were dead to the world,” Lance said as he got up and tossed the quilt back into place. “I said your name, like, twelve times and you didn’t wake up.”

“Really?” he said, and cringed at how stuffy his voice is.

Lance hesitated, standing on the other side of the bed as he watched Keith pull out some spare clothes, and tossed them to the bed for Lance to change into. “You want to take a shower or something? Get cleaned up?” Keith asked him, but Lance was still just staring at him.

“Your voice sounds different.”

“I’ve just got a bit of a cold. It’s fine.”

“A cold? Do you need a blanket?” Lance asked, and Keith scoffed a little, shaking his head as he pulled on a crewneck sweatshirt over his head. It was dark red and white around the hem. 

“ _No_. A cold just means that I’m sick. It musta been from yesterday morning when I went out in the rain. It happens sometimes,” he confessed with a wave of his hand.

Lance was still staring at him like he was a completely different person. “You’re really pale. Here—sit down. I’ll… get you some water or something. Do you have anything to fix your cold?” he asked, hurrying over and taking Keith by the shoulders and forcing him onto the bed. 

“It’s _fine_ , Lance. We have to get going—”

“No, we aren’t going. I think we have something like this at home. I had it when I was little and I couldn’t do anything for _days_. It _sucked_. I’m not gonna put you through that. It’ll be fine—we can just go when you’re feeling better,” he insisted, and after making sure Keith was settled, he ran off to fetch some water. Keith stared after him, exasperated, and more or less disoriented by what this meant.

They’d have to put off the Hunt for the Truth for another time. Keith wasn’t sure if he could stand being so vulnerable, not knowing the consequences of it until it’d be too late. His hazy mind jumped straight to the conclusion that this would be the end. He’d fall into a feverish daze and be eaten alive by a mythological creature because he was too much of an idiot to ask sooner.

Keith fell back on his bed with a groan, tossing his arms over his eyes and wishing this fucking headache and head cold away. Why the hell did his sinuses have to fail him today, of all days? Figures. A life or death situation comes along, and he can’t even function on autopilot. At least, maybe he could have, had Lance not screeched him to a halt and redirected him into the comfort of his bed with a glass of water, and the promise of food on the way. 

They spent the morning in bed, Keith showing Lance how to peel oranges and crack hardboiled eggs. It wasn’t until Keith drifted off that he realized his nightmares were due to whatever fever was brewing, but it changed every time. He only vaguely remembered the dream he had the previous night, where Lance spiraled beneath his boat in the shape of razor-sharp spinal fins and layers of teeth like sharks. His gills were sheltered by a fan of blueish, sea-green fins spiked along the edges. 

At least, that was the image Keith gave himself when he started to realize there was a pattern here. Lance crouched over him on the bed with the back of his hand pressed to Keith’s forehead. “Are you sure you’re cold? Your head says otherwise.”

“It’s fine. That’s just the fever,” Keith muttered, trying to sniffle but at this point it was useless. He reached over to the nightstand and plucked out a few tissues. “Hey, Lance—I have a question.”

“Sure.”

“What… exactly _are_ you?” he asked, frowning as he watched Lance sit back on his heels, watching Keith steadily with those wide, curious blue eyes. “I mean—I’ve been wondering and I just want to… _know_ that whatever you are isn’t—God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be asking this.”

“Isn’t what?” Lance repeated, eyebrows lowering.

“Well—I had a dream that you were a _siren_ , and you tried to _kill me_. I just want to know that… that won’t happen, I guess,” he confessed, feeling his entire face heat up. _God_ , that’s embarrassing. So this humiliation was the reason why he refused to ask sooner. “A-And then I had a dream that you were this massive serpent thing that sank ships and shit.”

“I already told you—I just eat fish,” Lance said, sounding both confused and bitter about it. Like Keith should have _known_ he didn’t eat humans. 

“I know! But if you _are_ harmless, I don’t want to keep feeling terrified of you for not _knowing_ , you know?” he confessed, rubbing a hand over his forehead as he felt Lance’s eyes on him. He couldn’t tell _what_ Lance was thinking, but maybe the past night was starting to make a bit more sense to him.

“Is that why you didn’t want to sleep with me last night? Because you thought I was going to kill you?” he said, folding his arms over his chest. His expression was stern, guarded. Keith realized he shouldn’t feel so guilty—he was just looking out for himself, and he had a right to know if he were to keep helping Lance. 

So he started glaring. “ _Yes_. And I don’t know why you’re so surprised that I’m asking again! It’s—” He stopped, throat swelling into a wretched cough that sent Lance into a panic. Keith sat up, leaning over and hacking into his arm as Lance scrambled off the bed to grab the glass of water. Keith pushed it away in favor of bolting out of the bedroom and into the bathroom where he coughed up the gunk in his lungs and spat the extras out. He returned and took the glass from Lance, downing it all before letting out a heavy sigh. “ _Shit_. Sorry.”

“What was that?”

“It’s just… stuff from my nose getting into my lungs. That’s what’s making me sick, probably,” he explained, and laughed a little. “It’s why I’m so angry we couldn’t go out today. I was hoping I wouldn’t even have to ask you this question, and just find out on my own. I don’t mean to… _insult_ you or anything.”

Lance waited until Keith was back on the bed, next to the towel full of orange peelings and slices. He took one and nibbled on it for a moment before answering. “I dunno. We don’t really have a word for ourselves. But we’re harmless, as far as I know. We just eat fish, swim up and down the coast, sunbathe… you know, the usual. We’ve never intentionally _hurt_ humans before. I think one time we accidentally tipped over one of those smaller canoes, but that was on accident and we helped them to shore.”

“Oh,” Keith said. “So what do you guys look like?”

“I dunno. Sometimes we look part-human, sometimes we’re just… it’s hard to describe. We’ve got these nice striped, skinny fins all along our backs, and we don’t have legs—just a striped tail. We’re sort of like seals, but _cooler_. At least, that’s what my sister says, but sometimes you can’t always trust her.”

“So like selkies?”

“No, we don’t have _pelts_ or anything like that. We don’t shed, as far as I know.”

He fell quiet for a moment, thinking about Keith’s question some more. He kept a hand to his chin as he thought, so Keith reached over and plucked an orange slice up and ate it. “I think… fishermen like us because I guess… we taste good? And our meat is expensive. But for the most part we’re ignored. I think there might be some people out there protecting us from being killed and sold.”

“That’s awful—that people would do that,” Keith said, sitting up a bit straighter. “So you all must be endangered then, if there’s people trying to stop fishermen from poaching your kind.”

“I dunno. At the feeding grounds there’s always so many of us. But maybe we’re just a… condensed population. Like, what if it’s just us around here? And there aren’t any other communities like us?” he asked, and Keith shrugged. It was plausible.

They sat in silence for a moment, considering the possibility that Lance’s species remained here, and nowhere else. After a moment, Keith felt Lance’s hand brush over his, and tighten his fingers around Keith’s. He looked down at their joined hands, and how the freckles on Lance’s fingers were so dark against Keith’s naturally pale skin.

“I would never hurt you, Keith,” Lance said, and forced Keith’s eyes up to lock with his own. They watched one another as Lance hesitated before saying, “Even if I _was_ capable of hurting humans, I would never do that to you.”

“Yes, but _before_ we got to know one another—” Keith started, but Lance slapped his other hand right over Keith’s mouth.

“ _No_. I wouldn’t have. And you know why?” he said, strict and yanking Keith by the arms. “ _Do you know why?_ ” he repeated, grabbing Keith by the shoulders and giving him a good shake.

“Fuck, _no_ , I don’t know why,” he hissed out, reaching up to pull Lance’s hands off of him. He held onto Lance’s wrists as he shook his head, saying, “Can we not talk about this?”

“We are going to talk about this because I want you to know that I wouldn’t have hurt you because you are the single most beautiful human being I have ever stumbled across,” Lance said, and Keith realized his ears were red, and starting to reflect the heat in his own cheeks. “And maybe it’s just superficial stuff, like love-at-first-sight or whatever, but when you were out on the boat and you pulled me in I thought everything was _wrong_ because nothing could have been as right as the look on your face when you gave me that blanket. You looked like a tomato and it was _so_ adorable. So I wouldn’t kill a tomato.”

“But… eating tomatoes are the same thing as killing them, and people eat tomatoes,” Keith corrected, mainly because any other word he wanted to say shriveled up and died inside his chest because his heart flat-out stopped beating for a moment there. 

“Oh yeah, tomatoes are delicious,” Lance said. “I don’t know how to describe it, but… if falling in love doesn’t kill you, then I wouldn’t mind you taking a part of me. Like, the part that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy because that’s the part that gets affected when I’m around you or think about you. And it’s stupid because love-at-first-sight isn’t a thing, but I really hope that you get that same warm fuzzy feeling. I’d say that’s a fair trade, ya know?” 

Keith sniffled and laughed a little, and let Lance lean towards him to bump their foreheads together. Their noses touched, and they were still staring at one another. Keith could see all the detail in Lance’s pale blue eyes, and the freckles dotting his cheeks. He could see Lance’s obnoxiously long eyelashes, and slip eyebrows, and the feel of his dotted nose and cool skin. With a shaky sigh, he closed his eyes and gave Lance’s wrists another squeeze. 

Keith smiled wide as they leaned together, the sunlight streaming in through the open window overhead. “Yeah, that’s a fair trade,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you can't tell I'm going through all my finals and need some outlet. This is, like... my version of a stress ball. 
> 
> Also, this would work nice in three parts. Act III will appear at random in the future. I just... will always die for scared Keith. Make him un-scared. Cherish this lonesome boy, my beautiful star-child AKA fish!Lance.


	3. How To Find Your Way Home: By Lance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This boy needs a compass, some sandwiches, and a Keith to man the ship. An improved memory might help, but it's optional.

The next day they left the house at dawn, regardless of Keith’s lingering headache, and the wad of tissues he stuffed into his winter jacket. They wrapped Lance up in one of the heavy scarves in the mud room, along with one of Keith’s mom’s older jackets. They packed a small cooler full of food and drinks, and before leaving, Keith ran back inside and nabbed his mom’s Polaroid from the counter. Whatever they found, even if it was just an empty, rocky island, he wanted proof of it. 

They started the trek down to the boat as Keith stuffed the camera into his jacket pocket. He could already see that pools of water collected on the cover of his boat, but at least the inside was dry when he unlatched the cover and tipped the water out. The sky was relatively clear, if not cloudy from all the previous days of rain. 

Lance climbed in before Keith even got around to lowering it into the water. So that all just involved Lance’s excitement over being so high-up off the ocean, and then being lowered down into it with the constant creak of metal against metal. Keith cranked the wheel around until the lift submerged completely, and the boat swayed on the calmer tides. They were sharing a bag of beef sticks, and Lance held out the bag with one of the sticks hanging out like a cigarette box. Keith leaned over and pulled it out with his teeth before saying, “I just have to grab the fish from the other day to bring in to town while we’re there. It shouldn’t take too long.”

“Okay. I’ll just be right here,” Lance promised.

Keith hiked back up to the house where he pulled his catch out from the freezer and laid it into one of the clean empty coolers down there. They were bitter cold and frosted over from the freezer, and carrying them just made it infinitely heavier because he was essentially carrying deadweight. But years of helping out his mom made it possible for him to make the trip without much difficulty, and when he dropped the cooler onto the boat, the sound made Lance jump. 

“Geez, how heavy is that?” he asked, and Keith shrugged as he brushed a hand over his forehead before hopping into the boat himself. As he went to go start the engine, Lance was busy inspecting the cooler, and taking it by the handles to heave it off the ground. He yanked on the handles, and grunted as he tried to lift it more than five inches off the ground. He let it fall, leaning over it and staring at Keith with an entirely new look in his eyes. “Holy shit—how much is in here?”

Keith shrugged as he unscrewed the cap on his water bottle and said, “I dunno—check.”

Lance popped open the lid and gasped at them. He didn’t even hesitate to swipe one out and hold it up for Keith to see. “There’s _so many!_ Can I have one?”

“Whoa—No way! I don’t care if you eat fish on a regular basis—it’s not exactly usual for humans to eat them whole like that,” Keith laughed over the sound of the waves crashing into the side of their boat. Lance pouted at him and put the fish back. “How about I make fish tonight, whenever we come back?” That seemed to help Lance’s outlook as he pushed the cooler up against the edge of the steps leading up to where the controls were, and where Keith stood at the wheel. Lance came over and curled up onto Keith’s chair with the blanket huddled around his shoulders and eventually over the top of his head.

They got to the town where Keith hoisted up the cooler of fish and led the way to the warehouse where the marketplace was. They took a much-needed break along the way so Keith could catch his breath and talk to one of the storeowners in town who wanted to know how everything was doing. He wasn’t even sure either of them remembered each other’s names, but for the most part Keith was able to recognize faces well enough. Lance got into a conversation with them and managed to swing a tour of the shop while Keith went to take care of the cooler. 

“Come to the marketplace afterwards. You remember where that is?” he asked Lance, who nodded and pointed down the street where they could see the massive doorways being pushed open. From here they could hear the metal of the doors creaking, and being heaved upwards by the massive chain. “Okay. I’ll meet you there,” Keith said, and dragged the cooler off the stone ledge to head across the street.

After meeting with the stall owner and getting his check for the catch, he went across the street to the bank, and returned to wait for Lance. He went to sit on the ledge of a wooden crate outside the marketplace, and propped a foot up onto that creaky, split wood bordering the trim of it. He picked at it with his partially-gloved fingers, and watched the people going about their mornings on the asphalt roads and the bland brick sidewalks. He wondered just how much a person could love living here when it was so… muted in color and sleepy in the days and nights.

And then he found Lance walking over, accompanied by the store owner halfway. He was wearing one of Keith’s mom’s old jackets now, with green felt lining on the inside, and dusty brown on the outside. Without the blanket, he still looked dwarfed by the scarf enveloping his neck and shoulders. The store owner waved goodbye, only to be tackled in a hug before Lance bounded off across the street, and slammed straight into Keith the second he stood up.

“Did everything work out?” he asked, arm still wrapped around Keith’s shoulders as they started to walk. 

Keith put his arm around Lance’s torso with a smile, saying, “Yeah, it was fine. I was waiting a while—what were you doing?”

While Lance went on a tangent explaining the store Keith had been in various times before, they walked back to the harbor, and down onto the wooden boards of the dock where they found _Eloise_ waiting for them. At that point, Keith was just amused to let Lance keep talking, and he didn’t mind listening at all. Lance’s fascination with the world was enough to entertain anyone, but Keith liked to think he enjoyed it the most.

When they got settled into the boat again, and Keith had the gas filled, it was nearing mid-morning. He spun the cap shut on the spare gas container, glancing over at where Lance sat beside him, his nose pinched between his fingers to ward off the smell. When it came to coasting out of the harbor, Keith had to stop Lance from jumping off the side of the boat to feed the seagulls, but other than that it was an uneventful departure from the harbor. They passed the lighthouse again, and Lance waved to it, shouting, “Thank you for helping people find their way home!” 

“It’s an inanimate object, Lance.”

“But someone has to be manning it, right?” he countered, leaning back on the bench to look back at Keith. Keith bit his teeth into his lip to keep from saying anything, mainly because every word on the tip of his tongue completely vanished. Just how many people in the world could look as adorable as Lance in that moment? 

When they arrived on calmer waters, Keith slowed the boat so the engine wasn’t roaring in their ears constantly. He sat back on his chair, and Lance wandered over to inspect the dash now that Keith wasn’t standing in front of it. He leaned against the back of Keith’s chair and pointed to the radar screen that detected the approximate depth of the ocean, and the fish-finder braced beside it. 

“You can see what’s underneath us with ‘em,” Keith explained. “This is where we are, and that’s as far down as it can scan.”

“I never really liked going super far down in the ocean,” Lance confessed, propping his chin up onto Keith’s shoulder. “It gets cold and hurts my ears.”

“Yeah, that happens.”

“It’s also dark and scary. So I just stick to the surface—but that’s where all the boats are, so there’s also that,” he confessed, and after a moment of silence, he said, “So the fish-finder can see me if I swim down there?”

“Yeah—it also shows the approximate size. But I don’t think we’ll need it,” Keith said, and reached over to turn it off.

“ _Wait—_ ” Lance exclaimed, grabbing Keith’s hand and pulling it back. “We can use it to find them, though! I mean, if they’re still around, they’ll be near the surface and be about the length of this boat.”

Keith lowered his hand, and it took a moment to process what that meant. He frowned and twisted around to look at Lance, who didn’t seem at all disturbed by that news. This was entirely new knowledge that reminded Keith of the nightmare where Lance was a massive sea-serpent, and while his boat wasn’t _massive_ or _commercial_ by any means, it was still a large size for a fish.

“What do you mean?” he decided to clarify before his heart leapt out of his chest.

“Yeah, like… I’d say usually I’m about the length of the boat, mainly because of my tail fins and such,” Lance explained, stepping down onto the main deck and spreading his arms wide. He spun around, frowning as he calculated the distance. “‘Cause with that boat of fishermen we accidentally tipped and then helped to shore… like… okay. Imagine me, right now, assuming I’m the size of my usual self. And then this would be the size of a regular human being in relation to me.” He framed the width of his chest, and then upon reconsidering, went for the width of his shoulders. “I think.”

“Holy shit,” Keith breathed out, pressing two hands to his head. “You’re, like, _the loch ness monster_ or something—”

“I am not a monster. We’ve gone over this,” he pouted, cheeks puffing out as he stomped his foot.

“Yeah, but you’re the _size of one_! You should have mentioned that sooner!”

“It’s _fine_ , all right? We’re harmless creatures, like big dogs and stuff,” he explained, throwing his arms down. 

Keith was so overwhelmed by this knowledge. What if they found Lance’s family _wounded_? How could Keith help a fish the size of his boat? And if they were wounded, would they transition back to humans? He started to worry about the consequences of sea life being injured—most of the time, tossing a fish back after catching it just resulted in its imminent death. Infection would kill them before they ever made it to shore, and if they did make it to shore, then what? It had been _four days_ since he picked up Lance from the water. What did that mean for the rest of his family?

Keith was so incredibly focused on navigating the boat that he didn’t realize Lance was now standing beside him again. He crouched down beside Keith’s chair, where the cooler was, and sat on top of it. “I didn’t think it was a big deal,” Lance murmured quietly, and when Keith looked at him, he found the guy with his eyebrows tented in the middle, distress lining his forehead. “I’m sure it’s weird enough as it is. I don’t want you to do something you aren’t comfortable with.”

“It’s fine, Lance.”

“I mean… if you wanted to head back, you could just leave me here? I’d find my way back—being in the ocean makes it easier for me to navigate. It’s just instinctual.”

Keith stayed quiet, mainly because he didn’t want his anger to get the best of him. He wouldn’t want to force Lance to do anything he didn’t want, like staying with him at his house for who knows how long. _He isn’t yours to keep_ , Keith reminded himself as his jaw tensed. But if they found Lance’s family…

Then what?

“It’s fine. I want to do this,” Keith answered finally, and reached over to hold onto Lance’s hand. “We’ll find your family.”

They sat in silence, aside from the general hum of the motor running, and the occasional spray of ocean mist kicking up on the side of the boat. When they finally arrived on the opposite coast, it was just a matter of deciding which way would be the best to tackle for that day—and if they were lucky, backtracking and continuing in the other direction was an option. But for the sake of time, they consulted a map, and the pictures that best resembled the rock formation Lance was looking for. 

They opted to go farther south. 

Lance was especially calm that day, considering how they started out. He seemed content with sitting at attention, squinting out at the waters, looking for some clue as to where his family was. Since Keith had no particular knowledge in what Lance’s kind looked like, he was little help. Especially after a false alarm because Keith couldn’t tell the difference between Lance’s kind, and boulder sitting off the side of one rocky island off the coast. 

Lance’s profile was tanned and golden around the edges, even with the dulled sky muting all the colors, sucking the life from Keith’s own pale skin. His splotches of freckles could be seen better today—maybe because of the infrequent droplets of sun that came and went, and made the sky unbearable to gaze at for too long. They covered his arms, it seemed, and made the curve of his jawline darker with them. He even had a few spotting his earlobes when he turned to look at Keith, sensing his eyes on him.

They studied one another for a moment longer until Keith turned his attention back forward.

“Tell me about your mom. What happened?” Lance asked.

“She passed away,” he answered, and swallowed hard as he felt Lance’s eyes on him, rising the heat to his ears.

“Yeah, but what else? Was she nice? What was she like?”

Keith sighed and rolled his eyes with a thoughtful hum. “Uh… she was really nice. Kind of a hardass, but that’s a given considering… everything. She was definitely more sociable—I get that comment a lot. I don’t talk to everyone the same way she used to.”

“Why was she a hardass? She musta had a reason for it,” he commented, moving over to sit atop the cooler, eyes raised up to watch Keith’s profile as his jaw ticked. But it didn’t seem like Lance would retract the question just because Keith was annoyed by it.

“Since she never had plants to send me out to university, she wanted to make sure I’d have something to sustain myself eventually. So I’ve apprenticed under her all my life and that’s that. It may also have to do with the fact that she was pissed at my father for leaving, but that was a while ago. She was always a bit aggressive about the subject.”

“Would you have gone to university? If you could?” Lance asked, and Keith shrugged, smiling a little.

“Probably not. I have everything I need, and I like the sea,” he confessed.

Lance had his face turned towards Keith, closer than before, so he turned to meet Lance’s steady blue eyes. Instead, at that same moment Lance went to kiss his cheek, their lips crashed together instead. It _definitely_ wasn’t even, or intentional at all, and they both pulled back out of sheer surprise. Keith’s hands were on the wheel, steering them away from the shallower part of the coast—avoiding the wake—but Lance brought his up to cover his mouth. 

“I, um—” Lance started, fading away as his eyes flickered all across Keith’s face before leaning forward. He brought his hands to Keith’s cheeks and rushed forward. Their lips connected with purpose this time, melding together for the few seconds it took for Keith to lose track of the wheel in favor of laying his hand against the soft scarf wrapped around Lance’s neck, and tilt forward into Lance’s embrace. 

Keith had never kissed _anyone_ like this. It was so incredibly perfect, and Lance’s lips were driving him _insane_. The sweet tinge of fruit still painted them, and his tongue and his teeth and _God, help me_. His admiration swelled in his chest and ached for some way to convey it. Some way to hold onto Lance and do _anything_ for him. How could this be the same guy he picked up on his boat and swore never to get involved with? It started with a promise to take him to the police station and get everything sorted out but—

—How could he even _think_ about—?

Lance tried to pull away, but Keith’s hands were tight on his scarf until the second their lips separated. Keith felt his entire body shudder, and at first he thought it was just from the cold, but his limbs went numb in an instant. His fingers dropped from Lance’s scarf as he shouted, “ _Whoa!_ Hey—the boat!”

Keith slumped and fell from the chair—nothing _worked_. His mind was in a tizzy and he couldn’t even see Lance when he jumped up to take the wheel and hear him panic. “ _Shit!_ Keith, get up! _Please_ get up,” he begged, abruptly spinning the wheel and sending the boat coasting a few feet from a rocky outcropping. He steered them farther out into sea, heart racing and head pounding. _What the hell was going on?_

“How do you turn it off!” he cried out, looking at the dash and all the dials and buttons. He scrambled to find the keys and ripped them out. The motor stopped whirring, and a momentary breath of relief gushed out. _Well,_ that _was a close one_ , he thought before realizing what the _real_ problem was here.

He tossed the key onto the dash and turned to Keith. He was still on the ground, eyes open and dazed, irises flickering to and fro as Lance heaved him off the ground with a groan. He kicked the cooler away— _ow_ , painful!—and scrambled onto the floor with Keith, feet skidding, and trying to hold Keith up to his chest.

“ _No_ … No, no—Keith, c’mon, wake up,” he pleaded, patting his hands on Keith’s cheeks and shaking his shoulders. His eyes couldn’t seem to focus on _anything_ , and struggled to even _look_ Lance in the face. “I-I didn’t mean to—I don’t know what I did—I-I’m sorry, Keith,” he cried, the pressure in his head spilling over his eyes with tears streaking down his cheeks. He pulled on Keith’s coat and pressed his eyes into the shoulder of his winter coat. 

Lance didn’t know what to do. He was never prepared for something like _this_ to happen. His mother always said he never prepared for _anything_ , and she wasn’t wrong. He wrenched his eyes shut and breathed out shakily, clutching onto Keith as though everything he ever cared about was contained within the motionless, dormant body in his arms. Screaming about it wouldn’t do him any good, so he stayed quiet, and tried to wipe the tears that came faster than he could brush them away. 

It didn’t take long for him to realize that the quiet was worse than anything. In the quiet, all he could think about was his family and where they might be. He looked up, cheek pressed to Keith’s hair and nose and eyes red from crying. The waves twisted the boat around, so he could see the rocky structure they almost drove straight into. He scowled at it, and wondered just how difficult it would be to drive Keith’s boat.

 _You can’t keep sitting around here—you aren’t useless_.

Keith was breathing softly against him, and Lance could feel his heart through the opened zipper of his jacket, where Lance’s hand pressed to his abdomen to keep him close. Keith’s eyes were still on him, and he blinked slowly before closing his eyes altogether.

Lance started to rise, hooking his arms underneath Keith’s. “It’s okay. Everything’s gonna be fine,” he promised Keith as he dragged him as best he could over to the cushioned bench on the open part of the deck. He rolled Keith onto the cushions, and his head laid tilted against his shoulder, in view of Lance where he went back to the dash, shaking out his quivering hands and looking to Keith for help. As if sensing it, Keith opened his eyes wide— _What’s going on?_

“It’s fine. I’m sure it’ll wear off,” Lance promised, for both of them. “When we find my parents, they’ll know what to do. Just… h-help me work the boat.”

  


  


Keith communicated with the movement of his eyes. They started with blinking, but that got too complicated and tricky to trust, considering _everyone_ had to blink not-on-purpose sometimes. And the silence was horrible. They were out there for _hours_ with no sign of his family, no sign of Keith’s condition letting up. More than once Lance couldn’t hold back the pressure behind his eyes, and he’d idle the boat so he could break down in the captain’s chair. 

Of course he wasn’t going to let Keith know that whenever he left Lance on his own at the house those few days they spent together, he cried harder than he ever had over his family. He missed his mom so damn much and the pain of her possible death was worse than he could bear. How was he supposed to go on when he spent his entire life with them? All his siblings—they could all be gone and here he was tracking the shitty breadcrumb trail to a dead end. 

And Keith treated him _so well_. He did so much for Lance, and all Lance managed to do was paralyze him with his crap luck at predicting things about his species his parents never explained to him. How was he supposed to know his kisses could render a man incapacitated? That wasn’t exactly something that was made _clear_ , now was it?

When Lance came back to the world, it was with a shaky breath, and a glassy-eyed look over at where Keith was laying. Keith’s eyes weren’t on him, though. They were focused on something to the left of him, and he followed Keith’s gaze to the cooler. 

“Are you hungry?” Lance asked, and panic gripped his chest fast. Thankfully, though, Keith shook his eyes back and forth. He looked pointedly at the cooler, and back at Lance. “You want me to eat?” _Yes_.

Lance frowned at him before realizing that his stomach was slowly grumbling all this time, rising in vigor. He clutched at it, still watching Keith and wondering if he was lying. If Lance was hungry, shouldn’t Keith be hungry as well? Whatever the case, he propped open the cooler top and pulled out one of the sandwiches Keith made that morning. He plucked at the lettuce and ate that before anything else. He took it over to Keith and sat on the floor, munching at his sandwich before breaking off a small piece of bacon from it. 

“Here, see if you can swallow this,” Lance said, and opened Keith’s mouth for him. Keith closed his eyes, and Lance nuzzled close so his forehead was against Keith’s hair. He absently stroked at it as they stayed there, sharing bits of bacon from the sandwich until Lance finished it all, and just sat there hugging Keith until his motivation returned full-swing.

He started thinking about the camera—the one Keith put into his jacket pocket. It was something he kept on his radar since Keith took that picture of him. He hesitated at the dash, his hands over the wheel as the boat rocked and twisted them closer towards land. Keith had his eyes closed, and Lance figured that if he had to think about anything, he’d better not thinking of the picture, or what Keith said about it.

“It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine,” he told himself as he started up the boat and continued on their initial route farther south. 

He wasn’t all that surprised that he managed to swim as far as he had. He and his siblings always raced one another, and they could get to incredible speeds when they wanted to. Being told to just “Run, don’t stop!” meant that Lance probably… _never_ stopped. Maybe he _couldn’t_ stop until _something_ forced him to. Probably exhaustion, or something to that effect. Whatever the case, he couldn’t quite remember the end of it, or what prompted him to shift back into a human. The shell he lived in now felt so natural when he was in pain. Maybe it was because he couldn’t cry, or show emotion the same way. He always admired how expressive humans were in general, and just seeing the simplest changes to Keith’s demeanor—slight grins; soft, arching eyebrows; the twitch in his eye when he couldn’t quite think of something to say. 

He loved the ocean, but something about being human felt so nostalgic to him. 

Lance kept his eyes on the coastline, focusing on the next bulge positioned off the coast. It took a while for it to become recognizable, and when it did, he screamed aloud. _That’s it_. That was the island he was looking for. 

He put the boat into motion, faster than before and the mist of the ocean spraying off the sides. The dull, white colors of the waters reflected the overcast, and as they drew closer, the shadows of the rocks mimicked the darkened clouds on the horizon, past the bluffs and the height of the island. Lance was almost too excited to slow the boat down, but past experience told him to be wary of the rocks as he idled the boat and hurried out to the edge. The waves rocked the boat, pushing them closer, but they were far enough to avoid hitting the shallow rocks. 

He hopped onto the bench next to Keith and leaned over, staring down into the ocean and _wishing_ he could hear something like what he was used to—the voices of his family carrying through the waters. He couldn’t see anything in this dark, grey abyss. 

“ _Mom!_ ” he shouted, running to the other side of the boat, screaming, “ _MAMA—!_ ”

The word echoed off the rocks, and his wide eyes surveyed the coast, running from one side of the boat to the other before he shoved open the door at the front of the boat, shrugged off his coat, and knelt down. He got onto his stomach, hands braced on the edge of the boat before tipping himself over, hanging his torso off the deck and dunking his head all the way under. He didn’t even bother to close his eyes.

The sounds of the ocean bubbled, and concealed itself to his human ears. He couldn’t hear them, and he couldn’t _see_ , and not to mention the fact that after just a minute his lungs started to ache. 

He resurfaced, gasping, and shimmied himself back onto the boat. He turned around, gasping for air, and felt icy cold water dunk itself over his shoulders and down his back. They were too close to the rocks, so he ran back to the wheel and turned them farther out to sea. 

His chest felt like it was solidifying. It didn’t help that his lips were quivering and the chill from dunking his head in the water seemed to spread through his entire body under the intense breeze from the ocean. His jacket was still on the ground, but he didn’t have time to grab it before the boat sputtered to a stop, and panic took over.

“ _No!_ No, no, please work please work please work—” Lance begged, hand going to the key and restarting the engine. It was _working_ , but it was like—something caught on the rudder. He turned to the back of the boat, and scrambled over to where Keith said the engine was, and where he knew the rudder propellers were. He climbed onto the back panel, past where Keith was laying. He leaned over, tears already spilling from his eye lashes, and as they dripped into the ocean where he tried to find the source of the problem, he found someone else instead.

He recognized those colors, and how they shifted like reflections underwater. 

His smile faltered into a sob, crying as he reached his hands down and spread them over the soft, gentle curve of his sister’s back, and to the fin she spread up out of the water. In the open, they were almost transparent, like they were composed of the tear droplets streaking down Lance’s face. 

Before he knew it, he was tumbling into the water after her when she started to swim away. “Wait! H-Hang on—” His words fizzled out and sputtered as he resurfaced, teeth chattering in an instant as he scrambled after her, feet kicking and arms stretching towards her. 

Something drifted underneath him, lifting his feet with their cool surface and pushing him out of the water. His entire body was numb, dripping with water, lips purple. The side of the boat was pushed up against him, urging him to climb back up. 

“Wait—I want to come back, I wanna come back,” he pleaded, trying to get back into the water, only to be forced up onto the ledge. “I-I need to help—” He suddenly rolled off the washboard and onto the deck, sputtering and coughing. He sat up, hands on the floor as he looked to Keith again, his happiness fading again. 

He was shaking so bad that he couldn’t find the strength to stand up again. Instead, crawled over to Keith and leant against the bench, searching for warmth against Keith’s soft, gloved hands. He could hear the movement of the water now, and the sound of it was utterly calming. It wasn’t just his sister out there. 

There came the distinct sound of something bumping up against the side of the boat, and he heard someone rise up from the water, clutching onto the ledge. He looked towards the washboard again, above where the rudder was, and he could hardly recognize his own mother at all. It’d been _years_ since they saw each other like this—like _humans_ —and even then the transitions muddled Lance’s memories the four times he actually came to land. His mother’s brown, damp waves of hair covered her bare shoulders, and he remembered the gentle curve of her smile lines, and how she beamed at him all over again.

“ _Lance_ ,” she breathed out, voice shaking as she stumbled out onto the boat. Her legs gave out, and Lance leapt for her, catching her around the shoulders and holding her to him. 

“I’m sorry—I’m sorry it t-took me so long to come back,” he stammered out, pressing his head against her’s. “I messed up—I messed up, Mama—”

Her trembling hand covered over his wet hair, and she laid it over his ear as she combed her fingers through his hair. “Sh… It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said, her round lips kissing his forehead before she smoothed her thumbs across his cheeks, dispelling the tear tracks from them. “You’re h-here now. I am so hap-py you’re _okay_.”

When he cried, it came out as a half-laugh, half-sob. He covered it against the bare skin of her shoulder before he moved away to grab his coat from the now damp floor. He wrapped it around her shoulders and let her slip her arms into it, and zip up the front. As she did that, he explained the problem, and his chest slowly twisted into a tight, terrible knot the more he talked, and the closer his mother’s expression turned grim. 

“What do I do?” he asked. “I don’t know what to do.”

She turned her eyes down for a moment, hands clutching the fabric of the jacket. Her fingertips were red, and her lips were just as purple as Lance’s as her jaw worked around the words she tried to say. Eventually she moved over to Keith, and around to where Keith’s eyes could see her. She laid a hand over his cheek, and removed Keith’s hat so she could tuck his bangs behind his ear. 

“Our love is a defense mechanism,” she told him. “And I am sorry you had to be caught in the crossfire of it. Normally it’s m-meant to incapacitate people who catch us or kidnap us, and eventually kill them. It’s just… unfortunate when people like you did n-nothing wrong. I never expected anything like this to happen to Lance, so I never told him. I hoped he would never be caught by fishermen who hunt us.”

She hesitated, hands still combing through his hair, perhaps because it was warm from the hat Keith wore. Lance stared at her, eyebrows twisted up in distress. “So I can’t help him?”

“Not without making his condition worse,” she answered, eyes lifting up to his. They stared at each other in silence before Lance pushed his hands over his face with a shaky sigh. “Ask him.”

“I _can’t—_ ”

“You love him, don’t you?” she asked, voice stern as ever. When he didn’t answer, she smacked him on the top of his head. He whined aloud, clutching at his hair as she said, “What was that? I didn’t quite hear you—do I need to ask louder?”

“Please don’t, Mama,” he huffed. “I’ll ask him.”

“It’s the least you can do for the poor boy. I’ll be waiting for you,” she told him. With that, she pushed her hands to the cushions and heaved herself up to her feet. She folded the coat onto the floor before she climbed onto the washboard and lowered herself down into the water. Lance’s gaze followed after her, pout still evident on his lips as he then turned to Keith, and laid his forehead against Keith’s arm. 

“I never meant to hurt you, Keith,” he said, voice shaking as he looked up to meet Keith’s now expressive eyes. They were glistening, and all Lance wanted to do was scream at himself for kissing Keith, and probably ruining any chance they could have had at a happy, carefree week together before Lance would return to the ocean. He never quite thought much farther than that, but it seemed like this kiss had other plans. 

Lance pressed his lips against Keith’s, just for a moment, and Keith blinked at him, a line of water streaking out of the corner of his eye and onto the cushion. 

“I can’t reverse this, but the best I can do is let you become one of us. But you have to agree to it, because it’s a _huge_ commitment. You can just do what I did and shift back into a human. You don’t even have to stay in the ocean if you don’t want to. And after all this if… you _hate_ me and never want to see me again, I’ll just… I’ll be fine,” Lance said, and ended with a deep exhale, and licked his lips before asking, “So do you want to do this? Become one of us?”

  


Lance propped open the side door on the boat, the one they would normally use to step on and off the deck to get onto the harbor dock. He went over to Keith and pulled him up, arms under Keith’s, and dragged him over to the door. He shed Keith’s coat and shirt along with his own, and then his trousers. He left their boxers on because taking Keith’s pants off was hard enough as it was. 

He let Keith’s legs fall off the edge, and one of his siblings let their fin run along the edge of Keith’s toes until Lance said, “Stop that! Quit being weird.” They were probably laughing, and he would have cussed them out had it not been so difficult lowering Keith into the water before tipping in after him.

He caught Keith by the arms and dragged him farther out into the water. Both of them turned cold in a matter of seconds, teeth chattering and movements jerky as their muscles spasmed in the cold. Lance held onto Keith, and said, “Okay. You ready?”

After a second, Lance held onto his breath and dunked them both under. They sunk into the ocean surrounded by the iridescent, transparent fish the size of boats, helping to keep them still under water until the bubbles from Keith’s mouth and nose ceased to exist at all.

  


  


Keith spent _days_ after resurfacing just… _shivering_. He’d never felt so cold in his life, and no amount of blankets helped, even after Lance helped him up to the house. It was almost like he couldn’t even move, not even after spending so much time in the ocean, so carefree and _wonderful_. At first it’d been incredible, but it just couldn’t beat having arms and legs, and the boat Lance’s family helped bring back to the opposite shore. 

After Keith was settled in the house, Lance had to return to the ocean. They never really had funerals for their lost ones, unless just… being with family to mourn counted. So Keith spent some time alone, like before but wrapped up in blankets and feeling ill to his stomach most days. He only ever got up to piss or eat a sandwich—it was a good thing they had a cooler full of food because Keith’s motivation to cook was as good as nothing at all.

The first time he got up to piss, he was so woozy in the head, he nearly fell over straight into the toilet, and then again against the sink when he washed his hands. So it was a bit of a surprise when he went to the bathroom a second time, and looked at himself in the mirror—

—and found nothing at all. 

He stared at his non-existent reflection and reached a hand up to his own face. Nothing showed back. It was like staring at a painting of the wall behind him. He looked at his hands to make sure they were still there before leaning against the counter to get a closer look at the mirror. He dragged his fingers against the surface before scrambling to grab the soap container and hold it up. The soap showed up, floating in mid-air. 

_What the hell—?_

He frowned at the mirror and tried to think of any other time Lance mentioned the mirror to him. He never talked about the mirror _once_. Evidently, not seeing his reflection wasn’t something Lance worried about, or even _knew_ was odd. It reminded him of a conversation they had before, though…

Legs still shaky and numb, Keith maneuvered his way to the kitchen and searched around the papers on the counter. He sifted through the pictures he and Lance looked through, and tossed them around until he found the newest one from his mother’s Polaroid. Her Polaroid camera, the one she kept as a backup for her usual DSLR. The one that she adored because it was handy, expensive, and also _mirrorless_.

The picture was of Lance—the one he stared at for so long, as if he never understood the concept of portraiture. Keith stared at it in an entirely different way now, and lowered it down onto the counter as he stared ahead and tried to think of what this meant. What sort of creatures wouldn’t show up in reflections? His first thought was _vampire_ , and then—

Ghosts probably wouldn’t show up in reflections.

Lance was never transparent. Light never filtered through him—it caught on the surface of his skin like any flash of a camera. Lance was never entirely human, now was he? Keith’s hands started to shake as he gripped the edges of the counter and realized why this was such a commitment. It might never have been written in stone like some manual for them, because maybe Lance’s family never knew in the first place.

Every last member of Lance’s family was dead, and they never realized it. And here Keith was, feeling like death and wondering if this was just some sick, terrible joke. 

It took a week for Lance to come back, and by then Keith was back on his feet and trying his best to get back to work, but his motivation plummeted in the time Lance spent away from his house in the bay. But either way, Keith found himself wandering down to the dock. The day was warmer, and sunnier, and he found a figure sitting on his dock beside his covered boat. There was dew drying on the waterproof surface as Keith walked up to it, and the sound of his boots on the wooden planks drew Lance’s attention to him. He was just wearing a pair of pants Keith left on his boat, so his knuckles and fingers were red, and his nose was as well. 

“Hey,” he said as Keith dropped his tool kit onto the dock and stared at Lance. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like shit,” he replied, and at first Lance laughed before realizing that Keith didn’t find it funny at all.

Lance pushed himself up to his feet and crossed his arms. “What’s the matter then? Is something wrong?” he asked. 

Keith glanced away from Lance’s distressed gaze. He didn’t see the tell-tale reflective lines that his family members tended to give off. He locked eyes with Lance again, and said, “Either you don’t know, or you’re just blatantly lying to me, but in case you didn’t know, your entire family is composed of _ghosts_ and we’re both dead, and the only reason I can think of for you to not tell me is because you never knew in the first place. Tell me what it is.”

He waited to see if Lance’s expression gave any of it away, and there was enough guilt there rather than remorse to suggest it. Keith cursed under his breath, pushing his hands over his face and turning away. His shoulders heaved up, and he tried not to let that momentary flicker of anger get the best of him. It was one of the things his mom often warned him of—how dangerous a temper could be. It explained her distaste for his father well enough.

“I’m sorry for not telling you,” Lance said quietly, and when Keith looked at him again, the boy had recoiled in on himself, arms hugging his chest and shoulders up to his ears. He looked so scrawny and malnourished, exposed like that. “It’s not like… the fact that I’m dead is a common dinner-table topic, huh? It kinda freaks people out.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Keith huffed, eyes wide as Lance flinched at his harsh tone. 

There was a moment of silence, but the look on Lance’s face made it seem like he had more to say. Maybe he just couldn’t get the words out, but eventually he swallowed hard and said, eyes not meeting Keith’s, “I-I didn’t want to tell you because it didn’t really matter. You could have decided you didn’t want to become one of us, and you still would have died. There was no way around it—this was just the better outcome, b-because I still get to see you, and you still get to be who you were before all this happened.

“But… my offer still stands. That if you still hate me, I won’t come around and you’ll never have to see me again.”

“I don’t hate you,” Keith sighed, “I never hated you for what you did. And honestly? If I had to chose which way I went out of this world, it’d _definitely_ be from kissing you.” Both of them went red in the face, and Lance covered his smile with a hand over his mouth, eyes sparkling. Keith scratched the back of his head, around where his ponytail was. “So… no. I don’t hate you, Lance.”

“Really?” he exclaimed, and Keith laughed, not even surprised when Lance yelped and ran at him. They collided on the dock, and Lance tucked his head against Keith’s with an excited laugh. Keith held onto Lance’s narrow torso, and his cold, damp skin. 

Lance pressed his lips to the shell of Keith’s ear, and then to his cheekbone, his nose, and forehead. “Well, I don’t think I can paralyze you now, so what do ya say?” Lance said, giggling as he leaned back to clasp Keith’s cheeks between his freckled fingers. Keith held his hands up to meet Lance’s wrist, and he studied his fingers enough to know what made them so freckled in the first place. They looked like scars, where their circulation cut off at their fingertips.

Keith nodded wordlessly, feeling _almost_ just as dazed as before when their lips connected, and he melted against Lance’s cool embrace. His breath came out calm between breaks as they took their time on the dock, washed over in morning sunlight. Keith thought to himself, _If I died like this, that would totally be okay_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here's a cool survey y'all can fill out for influencing future works of mine! I keep up with it frequently.](https://girlskylark.typeform.com/to/zkiD8u)
> 
> So I think... that there's like, this collection of angelic-like fish that are essential the souls of people who died in shipwrecks and stuff. And it probably started as a family perishing and wanting to help other people who were trapped in boats that capsized, and in doing so they just sorta... help their souls live on in the bodies of huge transparent, iridescent fish because why the hell not. And so Lance's family mighta been from WAY way back. Like, Lance could be 500 years old for all I know, and they coulda gotten into a shipwreck in the Caribbean and traveled all this time to where Keith lives. Anyway, imagine... the lore behind this obscure fishermen who just looks like a teenager, and has lived there forever, and that would be Keith. Keith becomes a cryptid. It's the only thing he's ever really wanted, tbh.
> 
> And honestly, I tried to find out if this is true, but since I didn't find anything contradicting it, I don't think Polaroid cameras (certain ones) have mirrors. So that was just coincidental. wtf. 
> 
> You can fight me on [Tumblr](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/), and I have a [Twitter](https://twitter.com/geewiIIikers) now.


End file.
